


The Lotus Eaters

by odiko_ptino



Series: Featured Character: Athena [2]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: (in context of war atrocities at Troy), (mentioned only) - Freeform, TW: addiction, day of recovery, odysseus' poor crew, the lotus-eaters, tw: PTSD, tw: rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 20:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17029566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odiko_ptino/pseuds/odiko_ptino
Summary: The Island of the Lotus-Eaters promises oblivion, and the inhabitants embrace it.





	The Lotus Eaters

On the island of the Lotus-Eaters, time… doesn’t happen.

There is no past.  No one remembers anything.  If they’re removed from the lotuses long enough, supposedly, it all comes back.  But no one leaves the lotuses so how would they know?  They’re aware that there was a past, once.  They all know they came here from somewhere. But the where and why are lost.  Their stories are sacrificed to the lotuses, and the beautiful sweet blossoms reward them with eternal bliss in return.  

There’s barely a present. They sometimes have conversations, but the content is forgotten.  People arrive and sometimes there’s a commotion, but the Lotus-Eaters don’t always notice.  People are nameless presences that drift through; part of the landscape.

There is no future. All things are the same.  An endless stream of days, filled with lotuses and a pleasant mist.  If something ever did change, the Lotus-Eaters wouldn’t notice or register the newness, and would forget the transition.  They are incapable of anticipating things being different in the future.  Nothing happens but floating along on the dreams of the lotuses.  

—————

If he thinks about it long enough, he remembers – Argyros.  His nickname – “eyes.”  He doesn’t remember why.  He remembers – a man, dragging him by the arm.  He remembers a boat, a monster, a city.  No context for any of it, though there are shadows on the edges of these memories.

They’re all Bad, though, these memories; so if he finds himself thinking of it, he hurries back to the lotuses and forgets again.  The memories fade, and he becomes just another drifting body among the sweet-smelling fields.

There’s a woman… no, not a woman.  Something else.  Tall and red and silver.  Wearing armor, which is Bad Memories, so he doesn’t really listen when she talks to him… and she does talk.  At length.

He doesn’t want to talk to her or remember things, so he eats lotuses until she fades out of his awareness.  She comes back though, often enough that he remembers her somewhat.  She seems like she must be a being of power, but even she has no match for the sweet forgetfulness of the lotuses.

—————————–

“It’s very exasperating. I can’t reason with him at all. It’s like his mind is constantly buried under these damn weeds.  I can’t fathom why he would choose this.”

“To confirm: you were definitely actually asking for my expert opinion, right?”

A sigh.  “Yes, please, Dio.”  

“You’re solving the wrong problem.  The lotuses are *a* problem, but ultimately they’re the symptoms that eclipsed the real problem.  And you’re never gonna logic your way past the lotuses to get to the problem.”

“What is the real problem, then?”

“No idea.”  

Another sigh; more long-suffering than the first.  “Dionysus…”

“Well, fine, I do know.  But it doesn’t matter.  It isn’t my problem and it isn’t yours.  It’s this guy’s, and he has to be the one to figure it out.”

“That was a roundabout way of saying we can’t do anything – ”

“Nah, nah, we can, but I don’t think your wisdom and my – uh – experience, is gonna be enough.”

“What do you suggest, then?”

“A team effort.”

“…oh.”

“It’ll be fine, it’s been a long time since Troy!  They’ll help.”

Privately, he thinks this could a good test-run of the new Olympus – to see if everyone really is willing and able to work together, mostly in the metaphysical realm, rather than via direct divine intervention.  

And if not, if it doesn’t work?  Well… sure, Athena wants to honor the final wish; but in the end, that disappointment would be a minor thing if it doesn’t work.  Dionysus has seen far worse for mortals in the thralls of addiction than drifting slowly through a pleasant fog.  At best, the gods can come together to inspire something beneficial to humanity. At worst… this guy will continue to dream, and to forget.

———————————-

_Argyros – “Eyes,” he was affectionately nicknamed – was a crewman on the great Odysseus’ ship; traveling with his king from Ithaca. Argyos had few skills of renown: a mediocre runner, a mediocre shot with an arrow, a mediocre player at the lyre. His mediocre skills among an army of heroes doesn’t faze King Odysseus, though.  After all, Argyros has the same clear grey eyes that are noted to be a feature of Odysseus’ patron goddess Athena.  Argyros, a young man who has mostly served as a shepherd, never as a soldier, is brought along mostly as a good-luck charm._

_During the war at Troy, Argyros mostly managed to accomplish nothing much for ten years.  Which, all things considered, might not be so bad.  He isn’t much like the war goddess he’s meant to be representing, and doesn’t take special pride in some of the heroic activities he’s done._

_When the crew reaches the island of the Lotus-Eaters, Argyros and the other crewmen are at once enchanted with the bliss of it all. Argyros will never know if the lotus meant the same to the others as it did to him.  When King Odysseus came roaring through, dragging his men back to the ship by the arm, by the strap of the chiton, by the hair… Argyros struck him, hard, and ran away.  Lèse-majesté; striking the king.  One final sin to forget._

_Odysseus doesn’t return for him again; or at any rate, doesn’t find him.  Argyros is free to drift, to dream… to forget.  Memories fade of the men who died at the end of his spear; of the children whose blood was spilled in the name of this war – Iphigenia kicked it off, Astyanax finished, others in the middle.  It was not Argyros’ own hand that cut their throats or threw them off the walls, but it didn’t matter.  He was in the same army; they were his brothers-in-arms.  Memories fade of the women – the broken-hearted, terrified women of Troy.  The Aegeans were all helping themselves to prizes.  Argyros himself did, almost.  The dark-eyed woman – no, call her what she was.  A girl.  Utterly terrified and weeping beneath him.  He couldn’t, in the end; walked away with her tears etched into his soul. Not that he did her any favors. No Trojan made it out unscathed. The city and its inhabitants burned._

_When the lotuses offered the chance to lose all of those memories, Argyros accepted.  Odyssesus’ good-luck charm abandoned him in favor of letting all the glory, and all the misery that accompanied it, fade into the lotus-scented mists._

_After enough time passes, the lotuses took the choice from him. There was nothing to forget, because he no longer remembered the soldiers or the women or the babies.  The lotuses took their hold on him; replacing everything else._

_Argyros drifts, unaware and uncaring that while he still technically is alive, he’s already lost his life._

————————————-

He hears his name a few times: “Argyros.  Argyros.”

That word refers to himself; he knows that much.  It catches his reluctant attention, and he finds himself looking at a shockingly gorgeous young man – probably a man – with an utterly beautiful face and long, soft, wavy hair.  

“You have to acknowledge the lotus is a problem, here. It’s basically fixed into your entire body now; you’re a slave to it.”

“Don’t care,” Argyros murmurs.  Is he… away from the lotuses?

“Yes, that’s a great deal of it.  You need to want to care, and take the initiative.  You have to want your mind back; to recover your wits and memory.” This familiar voice.  The woman… no, not a woman.  No more than the first person is truly a man.  They’re something other.

“And your health.  And mastery of your own body.”  

This third voice cuts in before Argyros can even explain that getting his memory back would be bad. The speaker is another beautiful, dark-skinned man with gold in his hair.  Who are these people?

To his surprise, he finds himself answering a question he hasn’t addressed in …. A long time.

“I fell too far,” he says, sounding distant from himself.  “We all did.  I was in the worst place.  The lotuses make it better.”

“The lotuses do nothing but take away your ability to think about it,” says the beautiful first speaker.

“Try to focus less on the loss, and more on making things better,” suggests a fourth voice.  A kind, round-faced woman with a soft voice suggesting warmth.

_Hestia_ , he thinks abruptly.

“It will be hard. You’ll backslide for sure.  You’ll have to find the strength to try again when that happens.  I’ll help with that.”

A huge, tall man in – fuck – armor, is saying this.  

“Wow, this is turning into a real group project, isn’t it?”  comes a loud voice from a handsome, athletic young man hovering in the air on winged sandals.  Unmistakable. This is Hermes.

“No one asked for you, dumbass!” admonishes the huge armored man.  Ares.  Has to be. It is.  Argyros remembers, now – Ares, on the battlefield, towering over them all, mighty and terrifying.

Hermes is undeterred. “Keep a positive attitude!” he offers in a loud voice.  “Lots of jokes!  Ask friends for help!”

“Yes.  All this will help.  Use anything that will help you break out of the lotuses’ grasp.” Dionysus.  The beautiful god of – of wine.  

Argyros blinks at them all – the gods of Olympus.  Well, some of them – Ares.  Hermes. Apollo.  Hestia.  Dionysus. Athena is peering at him, and writing furiously on a scroll.  

“This has the potential to work.  If everyone holds up their end.”

“If he holds up his end, too,” Dionysus says, voice gentle.  He adjusts Argyros’ clothing, smoothing it for him.  “Listen, buddy.  You’ve been here a while.  The lotuses have sustained you for long years.  Your old king – Odysseus – he asked Athena if she would try to get you out of here.”

“…Me…?  Odysseus?  He’s waiting?”  The last clear memory Argyros has of anything at all is of Odysseus – as Argyros had struck him.  If Odysseus was summoning him, it couldn’t be for anything good… where are the lotuses…

“Odysseus is dead – Ow!” This blunt announcement comes from Ares, who is promptly elbowed by five other gods.  

Athena looks… subdued, at this.  “Yes. He is gone.  He asked me to retrieve you.”  She looks up from her scroll at last, at Argyros.  “You are the last of his crew.”

This shocks him the rest of the way awake.  “They’re all – Menon?  Linus? Theron?”

“The crew befell tragedy after tragedy, after leaving this place,” she tells him.  “The Cyclops Polyphemus; the sorceress Circe; the pass between Scylla and Charybdis… and finally, their final fate came upon them when they slew the cattle of Helios.  None survived, but Odysseus… and you, as it happened.  Odysseus remembered you, when he was and old man and – and dying.  He asked me to retrieve you, which turned out to be more difficult than I’d anticipated.”

Odysseus, an old man – dead, now.  His friends, sailed on without him, and long dead now too.  Argyros’ still-addled brain is struggling to grasp it.  Is he still dreaming?  Did the lotuses turn to poison somehow?

“How… how long?” he manages to ask.

The other gods look at each other and shrug.  Odysseus didn’t mean much to them, of course.  Only to Athena, who answers promptly.

“You’ve been here for fifty-three years,” she says.  “I found you here about ten years ago; after Odysseus… left us.  It took this long for me to give up trying to – ”

Argyros hears no more of her explanation.  Unconsciousness overtakes him – it’s all too much.  This time, the sleep is not sweet and misty.

—————–

When he can think straight for a length of time again, he thinks first of Odysseus, because it’s easier. He wasn’t as close to Odysseus – the king kept a certain aloofness from his crew, as was his right.  

Odysseus, old and frail. It boggles the mind.  It surprises him not at all to learn that Odysseus had been mostly single-minded in his attempts to return home to Penelope – he might be changeable as the weather in every other regard: a noble hero, sure; but a liar and a conman as well, and everyone knew it.  But the one absolute fact about Odysseus was his love for his queen Penelope. Argyros supposes he’s happy for them. But that’s already come and gone, hasn’t it?  They’d had their pain and their joy while he was here sleeping awake.

The crew.  The reliable and stoic Linus, a man of few words. Theron, who always bit off more than he could chew and was lucky to have survived such a war as Troy.  Sweet, nervous, sensitive Menon, who was never quite the same after witnessing the rage of Achilles – even though they were on the same side.  How did he die?  Or any of the rest of them?  Argyros can’t bear to imagine it.  

He’d lost them all to the lotuses.  He’d wanted the lotuses to take his nightmares of Troy and they did.  But in exchange they’d taken all else from him.

Dionysus tells him he can’t leave the island yet.  He’ll die if he leaves the lotuses too quickly.  Argyros gradually tries to stay away from the lotus-fields longer and longer. He walks through the fields, filled with lotuses and people, who are standing or sitting or laying down with pleasantly blank expressions on their faces.  Argyros shudders to see them.

His body begins to ache and shiver as withdrawal begins to ravage him.  He prays to Apollo, who doesn’t come in person – but sends him knowledge of how to attempt to strengthen his body through the agony.

The nightmares of Troy return swiftly.  Argyros sees, again, the men he’d killed.  The children sacrificed.  The women raped and kidnapped.  He prays to Hestia, who reminds him that ‘who he is’ is not the same as ‘the worst things he’s done.’  Argyros stares into the flames of his campfire and hears her say that he cannot change what happened – no one can, not even a goddess.  But he can always, always try to make things better.

As Ares had said… Argyros sometimes cannot take the sorrow.  He returns to the lotuses and weeps as he eats them, feeling the blissful mist wash away the pain of Troy, the pain of his friends’ deaths.  When he wakes, he prays to Ares for the strength to return to his task, and imagines he can hear the soldier tell him of how hard it can be to press forward in the face of total misery, but that it’s the single most powerful thing a person can do.

He feels his mind coming back to him – not just the memories, but the ability to piece together actions and events.  He can make basic plans for his day, to do something different, to imagine what he might do if he leaves this island… he prays his gratitude to Athena.

He sees none of the gods again (save for one), after that initial meeting.  These interactions take place solely in his mind, in the form of a wave of… of inspiration that comes to him when he prays.  It’s as though they loan him their strength, their power, when he calls upon them.  It’s unorthodox – he’s accustomed to the gods either directly interfering, or completely ignoring the mortals.  This… metaphysical action is new and strange – distant but encouraging.  He finds he’s more grateful for this new method – direct intervention would have been unlikely for a humble shepherd/soldier before, but even if they’re not physically present, he feels their presence more closely this way, somehow.

There are times, when he walks through the fields, when he thinks he sees faintly puzzled frowns on the faces of the Lotus-Eaters.  He wonders if some of them are praying, too.

After months of struggling, he feels clear-headed enough one day to walk to the water’s edge.  The waves lap at the sand.

Argyros remembers all the ships of the Aegeans, bobbing in the harbor in sight of Troy’s walls.  He remembers being a boy and fishing with his brothers. He imagines his friends, the crew of Odysseus, sailing into the distance to die without him.

“Hey, buddy,” comes a voice behind him.

Argyros turns to look: it’s Hermes, unexpectedly in person.  The god is wearing a small, sympathetic smile.

“Dionysus thinks you shook off the worst of it.  You ready for my part?”

_Keep a positive attitude.  Lots of jokes.  Ask friends for help._

“… how am I going to do that?”

“I’ll carry you,” Hermes says.  “Off the island.  If you’re ready to make that step.  I’ll take you somewhere you can make friends, and move forward.”

Argyros doesn’t answer immediately.  He looks out at the ocean, where his old friends died.  Far across the water are the ruins of Troy, where even more of his friends died, and where he committed so many atrocities that he nearly destroyed himself to forget.  

_I vow it_ , he says to his friends, and to the gods.   _I will make the best I can of the time I have left.  I’m freeing myself from the lotus.  I vow it_.  

A hand on his shoulder. “That’s great.  We’re all proud of you,” Hermes says.

The god lifts him to his shoulders.  Argyros looks back one final time at the hills, covered in lotuses, where so many others still lie dreaming for any number of reasons known only to themselves. The island recedes in the distance, fast, as Hermes carries Argyros the rest of the way to – wherever he’s going, and Argyros looks forward to see.


End file.
